Bøker av Philip (Columbia University) Kitcher

The Rich and the Poor is part chronicle, part analysis of a disturbing sea-change: the abandonment of ethics in public policy. Seventy years ago, it was possible for serious thinkers, including some in the governments of affluent nations, to consider policies for raising living standards worldwide. Today, by contrast, the principal policy questions revolve around how to stay on top in a dog-eat-dog world.  Philip Kitcher, one of the world's most eminent philosophers, offers a new account of how ethics and politics should mix. The world needs to explore and reprioritize ethical questions, through inclusive deliberation that is both factually informed and mutually engaged with other perspectives. Achieving that end is hard, but without aspiring to it, we are likely to condemn our successors to lives of great hardship. Climate change demands global cooperation of a kind that can only be obtained by returning to ethical inquiry. The divorce between ethics and economics threatens disaster for all.

A landmark work of environmental philosophy that seeks to transform the debate about climate change.

Abusing Science is a manual for intellectual self-defense, the most complete available for presenting the case against Creationist pseudo-science. It is also a lucid exposition of the nature and methods of genuine science. The book begins with a concise introduction to evolutionary theory for non-scientists and closes with a rebuttal of the charge that this theory undermines religious and moral values. It will astonish many readers that this case must still be made in the 1980s, but since it must, Philip Kitcher makes it irresistibly and forcefully.Not long ago, a federal court struck down an Arkansas law requiring that "scientific" Creationism be taught in high school science classes. Contemporary Creationists may have lost one legal battle, but their cause continues to thrive. Their efforts are directed not only at state legislatures but at local school boards and textbook publishers. As Kitcher argues in this rigorous but highly readable book, the integrity of science is under attack. The methods of inquiry used in evolutionary biology are those which are used throughout the sciences. Moreover, modern biology is intertwined with other fields of science—physics, chemistry, astronomy, and geology. Creationists hope to persuade the public that education in science should be torn apart to make room for a literal reading of Genesis.Abusing Science refutes the popular complaint that the scientific establishment is dogmatic and intolerant, denying "academic freedom" to the unorthodox. It examines Creationist claims seriously and systematically, one by one, showing clearly just why they are at best misguided, at worst ludicrous.